Recent allegations that two foreigners have been registered as voters in Malaysia are not correct, Election Commission (EC) chairperson Abdul Aziz Mohd Yusof said today.

azlan The EC has found that they were actually impersonating genuine citizens who did not know their identities had been stolen, Aziz ( left ) told a press conference.

One allegation involves a ‘Hassanuddin Manna’, who is registered as a voter but who has been convicted and jailed for the possession of a false MyKad.

“When the EC investigated, (it found his) real name to be Montasir Juwak Hasan. He is from the Philippines and lives in Kampung Kalansanan Inanam in Sabah,” Aziz said.

“My officers met this Montasir at the Kota Kinabalu Central Prison, after obtaining information from the National Registration Department (NRD), the police and the Prisons Department.

“He admitted that he had used the document fraudulently and that he does not know who is Hassanuddin. Montasir said he purchased (the document) for RM1,000 from someone a year ago.”

Man did lose his MyKad

Aziz said the NRD’s records showed that the real Hassanuddin Manna was indeed a Malaysian citizen, with valid identification documents.

The other allegation concerns one ‘Salleh Samsul’, a supposedly Filipino national who had registered as a voter using a fake MyKad. This person was on Sept 20, 2010, imprisoned for a year.

In this case, Aziz said, the EC was unable to locate the real Salleh Samsul. However, it managed to speak to his wife and children.

He said neither the wife nor the children were aware of Salleh being imprisoned and they claimed that between June 2010 and April 2011,  he was working as a welder on Petronas’ oil rigs.

However, Salleh did lose his identity card while stationed in Sabah.

   

“Someone must have found it. Perhaps the finder had used it but was arrested.

“That means someone else was using Salleh’s missing identity card; the document was original but was used fraudulently,” the EC chief added.

Aziz also said that records showed Salleh to be a legitimate citizen of Malaysia.

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